Nationality: United StatesExecutive summary: Father of the Americans with Disabilities Act

Justin Dart, Jr. was born to privilege: the son of prominent American industrialist Justin Dart, he was educated in elite private schools and had two lion cubs as childhood pets, but was raised primarily by maids and nannies. He became a rambunctious adolescent and claimed to have broken "the all-time demerit record at Andover". Everything changed for Dart when he was stricken with polio at eighteen years of age. He was hospitalized for two years, then attended the University of Houston in a wheelchair in the early 1950s, a time when curbs and stairways were ever-present obstacles.

He attended law school, but dropped out to open a bowling alley, and later was an executive with Tupperware Brands while his father's Dart Industries owned that business, but Dart became best known as an advocate for the rights of the disabled. He was Commissioner of Rehabilitation Services under President Ronald Reagan in 1984, and under George H.W. Bush, he was named to chair the Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities. He championed the Americans with Disabilities Act, which became law in 1990, prohibiting discrimination against the disabled by government agencies and companies that do business with the federal government, and requiring handicapped access to buildings, transportation and other public services. At his alma mater, the University of Houston, the Dart Center for Students with DisABILITIES is named in his honor.